


Far Beyond

by clare_de_luna



Category: Voltron - Fandom
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Character Death Fix, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Gay Keith (Voltron), How it should've happened, Lotura - Freeform, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Shadam, Team Bonding, Team as Family, klance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-11-08 07:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17977388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clare_de_luna/pseuds/clare_de_luna
Summary: Seasons 6-8 happened...not as I thought they should. So this is here to validate all the characters who were done wrong. It's to show the potential that Voltron had and how things could have been....Pidge discovers an alternate reality and learns that things are not as they seem. Meanwhile, Lance and Keith struggle to learn what it means to be a part of a team. Shiro will have to contend with his trauma from the past to move forward as a Paladin. Allura and Lotor must sort out their differences if they truly want to bring lasting piece to the universe...all the while Hunk is trying to keep everyone together. And Earth? It must be saved from the worst of the realities...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The series will start just after the Monsters & Mana episode just before things go completely awry...
> 
> If anyone has suggestions for tags, please leave them in the comments!

**[Chapter 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5jlLJa2Zhs) \- Shroedinger's Lion **

**Pidge**

Something was wrong. Pidge knew deep in in their mind that the data was off, but they couldn’t lay their finger on what the issue was.  
As per usual, they started to go over the facts in their mind. Yes, the data was marred from when Voltron went to the alternate dimension to retrieve the comet. Yes, the jump had re-calibrated several of Pidge’s and Hunk’s sensors, but the both of them fixed the monitors. Yes, the foray into the white hole had almost busted all of the castle’s servers. Yes, Hunk had still made cookies after the Paladin’s last mishap. And yes, Pidge’s gender felt as confusing as normal.

  
But the most significant change had occurred when the White Lion guardian hit Voltron with its blast.

  
Because ever since then, the crew hadn’t been the same—ever since Allura and Lotor returned from Oriande. As Lance complained, Shiro’s behaviour was off, Allura was more fickle with her feelings than ever before, and if Pidge did not trust Lotor before he whisked them to Oriande, they really didn’t trust him now.

  
It was as if outside forces were toying with them.

  
Pidge ran down to the Green Lion’s bay—which Pidge had recently decorated with symbols of Earth’s alchemy to research with Allura about the chemistry of it. The Green Lion—at least in Earth lore—was instrumental Pidge thought in creating what the ancients had called the philosopher’s stone. That and the puffs floated around while Pidge conducted experiments.

  
They finally settled in their chair and opened the supercomputer.

  
Pidge opened a new screen, which emitted a gentle jade light. A part of them wondered if they should call Hunk down to the bay to help bounce ideas off of, but they wanted to be sure of the theory before they came to any conclusions. There was no need to worry Hunk.

  
A first, Pidge wrote a program to help scan for any discrepancies in the system. Whatever was wrong would be minuscule. After an hour and a half, Pidge groaned. They would have to glean any mistakes from the numbers themselves. By hand. Fuck.

  
All the values were adding up, and Pidge tried everything to invert the data to yield any changes.

  
Any changes, Pidge realized, could only be compared to values in Pidge’s head.

  
Something was indeed not right.

  
Voltron had opened up in a new dimension.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been looking for the answer  
> Ever since we were seventeen  
> You know the truth can be a weapon  
> To fight this world of ill intentions  
> A new answer to the same question  
> How many times will you learn the same lesson?


	2. Shroedinger's Lion

Pew! Pew! Pew!

  
The Altean drones fired at Lance, forcing him to dodge the blasts.

  
He somersaulted to the corner, and leveled his gun at the drones. With three quick shots, the drones split apart, clattering to the ground.

  
“Take that robot thing! Lancey Lance is back!”

  
Lance glanced at the stats board as it calculated his time—a hundred and three seconds. Just two seconds over the all time Paladin record.

  
_Held by Keith_.

  
He groaned. He looked at the board again, just to be sure. A unwarranted wave of emotion washed over him. He gripped the red bayard tighter. Was it competitiveness? Frustration? Heck, he didn’t know.

  
He started the simulation again, this time with the larger robot. He positioned his bayard in front of him, willing it to change for the sword. Tactically that made sense to get in close to the lumbering robot.

  
But no matter how he needed the sword, it didn’t return to him.

  
Lance bent frantically out of the way of the robot’s quick jabs, but on the seventh stroke, it nicked his right hand. A shot of pain made his hand go numb. The gun fell from his hands.

  
“Simulation failure.”

  
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t rub it in,” he grumbled.

  
The floor opened, taking the robot with it down to the storage room or wherever the heck the castle hid things. The castle still didn’t make sense to him.

  
He glanced down at the bayard again. When the Altaen broadsword first appeared, Allura explained that the bayards took on the shape that the wielder needed.  
But he couldn’t call it again. Whatever emotion he had had in the training room hadn’t returned.

  
Something was different. Something in him felt different. But he couldn’t put words together to describe what was wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

“Try again, Princess,” Lotor suggested. His voice rang through the hanger of the Castle of Lions.  
“I thought that I had it,” Allura said. “I thought I made a breakthrough after playing the game with the Paladins, but no matter how I use my alchemy on the flux capacitor or the pressure stabilizers, the ship won’t respond to me.”  
She leaned against the silvery side of the ship, her hands faintly glowing from her work. She tried to imagine how the ship and all its components connected together.  
“It has only been just one phoeb since our return from Oriande,” Lotor rationed. “Alchemy takes years of practice. I have heard tales of your father and the other ancients spending several deca-phoebs just mastering the basics. I know you have it in you. You just need to try again.”  
She gave him a smile. “I know I want the ship to help bring peace, but I can’t envision the ship. My father always gravitated towards lions and other like beasts, so he found the ships’ shape naturally.”  
“I have found patience to be useful,” Lotor said, “I have no doubt that you will be able to succeed. In the meantime, we should take a brief reprieve.”  
He smiled softy at her and tucked a stand of her hair beside her bun.  
“I suppose you should go back to the empire,” she said. The idea of running a kingdom—an empire—seemed so foreign to her now. She had helped rule alongside her father since he thought her responsible, and she had never felt like her duties as a princess were an unbearable burden. Her friends from Altea and other neighboring planets had helped her as well. She ran over their names: Rhiannon, Aanya, Strelka, and Ramandor. She would never forget them—could never forget.  
She had thrown herself into being a princess without a second thought.  
In the past two deca-phoebs, she had thrown her thoughts into her father’s legacy, making Voltron the hero of the universe, but she missed her people. Her community. The purpose and direction governance had given her and that she had given back to Altea.  
“I have time before my presence is required,” Lotor replied. His eyes were soft as if he saw her plea.  
Of course, Lotor would have had all the time in the world. Ancients knew how old he was. But still she was glad for his company. Her heart gave a little flutter.  
“May I show you the rest of the Castle of Lions?” she asked. “You never properly saw it before…”  
“When you took me prisoner?”  
“Well yes,” she said. “It may be the last remnant of Altaen architecture. Other than Oriande of course.”  
“That would be lovely,” he said. She entwined her arm with his. The gesture felt so natural. With the Paladins and Coran, and now Lotor, she finally felt as if she had a place in the universe.   
“Princess!” Coran paged over the intercom. “You are needed on the bridge. It is of the utmost importance!”  
She gave a sad glance at Lotor. He gave a small nod, and she tightened her grip on his arm, walking towards the bridge.


	4. Chapter 4

“What exactly are we looking for?” Shiro asked. Pidge had them all gathered around now. Lance in his black armor, Allura and Lotor linked arm in arm, Hunk of course with his apron. Pidge hated the attention, but this called for it.

  
“We’re in another reality.”

  
The weight of their statement left a silence over the room.

  
“How can you be certain that we are in another reality?” Lotor asked.

  
“It could be virtually anything. Earth philosophers theorized that the mutli-verse could be created from a coin flip, so that leaves us with virtually infinite possibilities.The physics could be the same. Everything could appear normal, except some infinitesimal detail that could be different.” Pidge turned to their crew.

  
“You’ve heard of Schroedinger? Like Schroedinger’s cat?”

  
“I can’t keep track of every old white guy back on Earth, Pidge,” Lance drawled. “Nevermind their pets.”

  
“Valid,” Pidge retorted. “Well basically, he said that two realities could exist simultaneously if the observer had no concrete proof of an outcome. His theory goes like this: Schroedinger placed a [cat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOYyCHGWJq4) in a box for an extended period of time. After that, there could be two outcomes after opening the box: one, the cat would be well and alive, or two, it would be dead.”

  
“Harsh,” Hunk interjected. “This philosophers really don’t know what ethics are do they?”

  
“It’s just hypothetical, Hunk,” Pidge said. “It’s not like we’re sticking anyone in say the quintessence field and wondering whether they’re alive or dead.”

  
“Hm, I’d still feel better if we could change it to cookies in a cookie jar. You know, like, the cookies are both eaten and not eaten.”

  
“Well it’s more like Schroedinger’s Lions, in this case,” Pidge added. “But sure cookies.”

  
Allura looked at them, slightly puzzled. “If I’m following correctly, then that means two realities could exist at the same time?”

  
“Yes,” Pidge said. “Obviously the science behind it is much more complex. It bothered me when we went to the other reality for the Sincline comet and met Sven. That shouldn’t’ve happened. With what we were anticipating of other realities, there shouldn’t have been another Shiro. Much less a Scandinavian Shiro.”

  
Shiro raised an eyebrow.  
“You met another Black Paladin?” Lotor asked incredulously.

  
“Then how will we be able to know we’re in the right reality?” Lance asked, ignoring the prince.

  
Pidge sighed, “We may never find out.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little Langst ;)

They all left the bridge in shock, not knowing what to do with the information. We may never find out, Pidge had said. It seemed just when they’d had everything figured out, nothing could be trusted.

  
As Lance left the bridge, he caught snippets of Allura whispering with Lotor.

“I would go back to my ship, but in light of this new development…”

“You’ll stay here for a little while until we know what to do,” Allura stated.

“Shall we test the Sincline?” Lotor posited. “In case we need another vessel other than Voltron to travel?”

  
As he watched them, Lance instinctively felt protective. It was like watching his sister, Rachel, trying to flirt.

  
“May I—?” Lance started. But Allura just gave him a sheepish smile while Lotor looked at him with an infuriatingly impassive expression. Lance put his hands in his pockets, stalking away towards his rooms. He threw up his hood. He knew Hunk would immediately go to the kitchens while Pidge would inevitably run tests with Coran and Shiro.

  
There was no place he wanted to go. No place that he felt like he needed to go. He grabbed the headphones out of his rooms, connected it to his tablet—the Altaean thing that was essentially like a smartphone—and set it up to play [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ095S0MmnA). Pidge only found the Altaen tech could only stream music from several decades earlier, nothing recent. Time to wallow.

  
He stared at the passing galaxies. The whole journey still felt unreal to him. It was hard to grasp what was real and what wasn’t.

  
He couldn’t comprehend it like Pidge. Or deal with it like Hunk and Shiro. He couldn’t seem to think of a solution like Allura or even that stupidly good-looking prince. He just felt like he was along for the ride.

 

* * *

 

When he was a young boy in Cuba, and he had too much energy for his mother to handle, Veronica would drag him down to the beach. She would point to spots on the beach and make him run to them as fast as possible. Or if she was bored, she would give him impossible tasks to complete.

  
“Catch a wave between your hands,” she’d say. “Build a sandcastle to stop the tide. Ask a mermaid for a dance.”

  
Then, Lance would run around trying to figure out some way to stump Veronica.

Once, he’d found a jar, filled it with water, then swirled it in her face. 

“I caught the wave!” he exclaimed through gaps in his teeth.

Veronica’s eyes crinkled with pride.

* * *

 

Now, he felt caught. His nervous energy had nowhere to move. He loved the Castle of Lions, he loved visiting the different planets (when they didn’t try to kill them), but it wasn’t home. At the Garrison, he dreamed—longed—to be a fighter pilot. To test the limits of what he could do. Sure, space had been apart of that childish dream. While he wanted to find peace and solace like the rest of them, he just wanted to get home. He didn’t have any of the lofty pretensions that Allura or Lotor had, he just wanted to feel at home.


	6. Allura

Allura’s home was unreachable. It only existed in her memories as she was often so cruelly reminded.

  
She stood in the hanger bay with Lotor, tweaking the Sincline ship. She was lost in thought as he fetched her pieces that she had molded out of the comet.  
Her concept of home had changed so drastically since she lost—she since lost everything. Rhiannon, Aanya, Strelka, and Ramandor. Her mother, Melinor. Her father.

  
Her planet.

  
She tried to remember everything she had gained since that moment. She could barely explain to the paladins that in those early days she had cried, cried, cried herself to sleep when she didn’t spend every waking moment trying to piece together their only hope in the universe. She thought of each of the paladins and what they meant to her. They were by no means replacements for what she lost, but they comforted her more than they knew. She snuck a glance at Lotor.

  
He was bent over a heap of the comet. It radiated a gentle blue glow across his skin and his armor. The glow made his hair gleam. He was so intent with handling the comet correctly that he didn’t notice her gaze. She smiled.

  
She knew her father would be proud of her if he could see her now. She hugged her own arms briefly. When she had achieved enlightenment in Oriande, her Altaen ancestors spoke to her through the ether. She could feel her father’s presence among them, but she hadn’t told anyone. It was comforting, knowing that the souls of the past Altaens spoke to her. It gave her hope.

  
“Princess, here is the quantum resistor,” Lotor said, snapping her back to reality. He held a circular chunk of metal which emitted a blackened light. She took it in her hands. Like most of the mechanical components to the Sincline, it was infused with her magical alchemy. She could feel its power emitting from its cool metal. With Pidge’s dire warning, they were not taking any chances. They had to upgrade [Sincline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sz0-4r3zN0) to withstand anything this new reality might throw at it.

  
“This will be difficult,” she said. Her armor extended a little, her gloves covering her skin. The filaments of the armor emitted a blue glow as it did so.

  
“Oh! It’s never done that before!” she exclaimed.

  
Lotor looked at the armor with renewed interest. “I wonder if the armor was made with the comet as well.”

  
She grinned. “Of course it is!”

  
“Then the suit may be responding to the environment,” Lotor said, placing the gleaming metal orb in her hands. She felt its weight.

  
She turned to the ship. “Well, my father crafted the Paladins’ armor as well as the Lions.”

  
“Did he really?” Lotor’s eyes widened. Allura adored that shine in his eyes when he discovered something new. Once he was intrigued by something, there was little holding the wonder back from his expression. She doubted that he shared this side of himself with many others.

  
“It’s true,” she said. “He was inspired by the Altaens chameleon like abilities and wanted the suits to have the same biological adaptibilty. So many of the missions Altaea used to take part in required us to travel to fairly inhospitable regions. They are meant to adapt to the Paladin as well as their surroundings. It is how the suits can morph into different shapes.”

  
“Your father truly thought of everything,” Lotor commented.

  
“He tried—it’s in Altaean nature of course to adapt,” Allura said.

  
Allura fiddled with placing the quantum resistor into its protected cell. Her hands glowed with her alchemy. Whenever she worked with the alchemy, everything seemed to break down to its simplest components in her mind. Then, she could bring the like elements together. The chemistry behind it all was so advanced that it was practically indescribable. Whenever Pidge had bombarded her with questions, she just answered that it was magic.

  
“I admire that about Altaens. It’s helped [us](https://youtu.be/hjl0kriRTvg?t=19) survive all this time,” Lotor added softly.

  
Whatever Lotor was saying dimmed in the back of her mind. Because the Sincline hummed to life. One moment, she felt little to nothing, and the next the Sincline’s essence was there. It was like watching—no, rather, feeling—a hatchling pop out of its egg.

  
“Oh! I’ve got it!” she exclaimed. She beamed at Lotor.

  
The machine glowed, coming into being.

  
Tears actually formed in her eyes. All of her work, all of her father’s legacy, she had in her hands. She remembered her promise with the ancient Altaens; she would create new life.


End file.
